


my skin feels like no one else's

by cashewdani



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-31
Updated: 2011-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life and times of Jenna Sommers, ages seven to twenty-nine, as told through her sister Miranda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my skin feels like no one else's

**Author's Note:**

> When will I feel soft was written by the awesome empressearwig and I felt incompetent even trying to remix this for her, but she requested, and I tried. Please know, J, that I tell my students trying is what's important, not necessarily the end result =)

Miranda swore from when she was a little girl that when she walked down the aisle, she’d spend the whole time looking straight ahead at the man at the other end. And when she met Grayson, and then when he asked her to actually go ahead and have the aisle with him standing there, she was even more sure.

But the day of, she doesn’t know what it is, maybe it’s that she’s going to get to look at Grayson for the rest of her life, or that she wants to remember all of this, the room, and the guests, and the way the light caught off the pews and the floral arrangements, but she feels her eyes flicking elsewhere.

And she catches her little sister, clearly trying to scratch her stomach with the hymnal she’s holding in her lap, and Miranda is happy she saw it, Jenna trying not to make a scene. She smiles at her, in a way that she hopes lets Jenna know she finds her endearing and not embarrassing at all, and after that, she’s able to just lock eyes on Grayson.

***

  
Elena coming into Miranda’s life wasn’t a planned thing, but she loved her fully and completely, and Miranda was sure about that because she was willing to approach her mother and say that she had done something without thinking it all the way through first.

Having Elena made Miranda a mother. And in turn made her realize that her mother didn’t know everything. 

So what if this doesn’t make sense? She and Grayson are going to raise Elena and screw appearances and logic and that her mother doesn’t want to have an adopted granddaughter.

She’ll come around, eventually, once she actually holds Elena, or they send her a Mother’s Day card or something, but Miranda knows she can win Jenna over before they even leave the house tonight. “How would you like to be Elena's godmother?”, she asks, and the look on Jenna’s face, it’s incredible. It’s like no one’s ever asked her something so grown up before, and they probably haven’t. Miranda kind of blames herself for that, the way that Jenna’s always been the baby, the youngest, the one that no one thinks is capable.

She thinks about saying that, how now Elena’s going to be the one that everyone coddles and pays too much attention to, but maybe Jenna likes it for how much she pretends not to. Or doesn’t even realize that it’s a role she’d been cast in since she was born.

"What?"

Miranda pulls Jenna towards her, and she wonders how long it’s been since her little sister actually let her touch her with any sort of affection without quickly pulling away. "You heard me. Do you want to? You are her aunt, after all. Who would be better?"

"Wow," Jenna says. "Wow."

"Can I take that as a yes?" Miranda asks.

"Yes! I mean, yes. I guess that would be kind of cool."

 _Kind of cool_ , Miranda thinks, as she picks up Elena and places her in Jenna’s arms, and remembers another exchange in this same room, her holding Jenna for the first time, how she decided in that moment that she was going to be the perfect example for her.

Never looked back.

***

  
“I heard that Logan’s now your boyfriend,” Miranda says as they’re cleaning up after the party. Grayson’s upstairs giving Elena a bath, and Miranda’s trying not to sound like she’s judging the situation, but she’s just so tired, there’s really no other way to sound.

“Oh my God, Miranda, he’s not my boyfriend!” Jenna flushes pink along her cheeks and up the sides of her ears, and Miranda can remember being that young. That embarrassed about something as wholesome as a boy saying he’s going to call you sometime.

She hands her another dish to dry. “If you need to talk to someone about anything...”

“Miranda! Seriously! Stop.” Jenna swipes the front of the plate so furiously it almost seems like she’s trying to rub off the pattern.

“Alright, alright,” Miranda acquiesces. She smirks on the outside, but in her mind she’s thinking about having to have this same conversation with Elena down the line. How she knows that Jenna’s going to drink too much, at least once, or need to talk about things she can barely manage to think about saying out loud and kiss boys who will break her heart. She touches her sister’s arm, just for a moment. Feels old and like the only advice she could offer anyway wouldn’t have come from experience. “We might have to get you some new outfits.”

She laughs when Jenna says, “What’s wrong with my clothes?” instead of “Thank you.”

***

  
Miranda knows she should have been the one to go to the school, but Jeremy was napping and Grayson wasn’t home from work yet and the sitter wouldn’t be around until 2, and so she waited at home, playing it over and over in her mind, how her mother was going to tell Jenna the words just like she’d told her, but that Jenna wouldn’t be able to hug her mother in a way that was comforting instead of asking for comfort. Wouldn’t know to tell her mother that things were going to be okay. And most of all wouldn’t have the safety of her own living room to cry in, where she didn’t have to think about the secretaries and the kids waiting for passes seeing her, spreading the story through the building just milliseconds after her world fell apart.

 _Jenna’s too young_ she thinks more than anything. Especially more than, _I’m too young too._

Elena sits on the bed as Miranda pulls out all the clothes that might be appropriate, saying, “Black!” like it’s a game and she’s recognized the pattern, and Miranda doesn’t want her daughter to ever feel the things that are inside her chest right now. The things that Jenna will have already pushed down deep by the time they pull into the driveway and she says, “I’ll wear the one with the buttons, unless you think Mom’s going to say it’s too revealing for church.”

***

  
She’s giving herself a moment. One moment alone in her own house where people aren’t touching her and reminding her how wonderful her father was, and saying they’re so sorry for her loss.

She buried her father today. She’s allowed to go a little off the rails, which for her apparently means smoking a cigarette out the window in the back bathroom upstairs.

Some movement on the lawn catches her eye, and it’s Jenna, with a beer, and John, and she can tell that they’re going to kiss one another long before they do. But she stands there and watches it all play out, and Miranda knows she should go outside like she’s taking the trash to the cans, but she’s just so tired of doing what’s right and expected and fixing everyone else.

She finishes the cigarette and reapplies her perfume before going down to ask her mother if she could serve her a plate, and tries very hard to not notice that Jenna is nowhere to be seen.

***

  
The phone rings at what Miranda considers late, a quarter to nine on a Thursday, and she can’t help it that while she’s reaching over Grayson to answer that she’s thinking _who’s dead now?_ , that little thrill beneath her ribcage.

“Hello?” she says, already trying to decide if she can leave the house in this particular pair of pajamas, when Jenna’s on the other side of the line saying, “I’m moving to New York.”

Miranda asks, “What?” because her mind was on who was going to pick up the kids from school if she had to be somewhere else, and not on processing something like this.

“I’m going. Next week, I’m just going to go.”

She sits up in bed, the comforter falling down to her lap. “You can’t go to New York. People get mugged in New York!”

“Yeah, sometimes. Because things happen to people in New York.”

Grayson rolls over to face the wall, laying his hand over his ear and she knows he has to work in the morning, but Jenna needs to see sense long before then. “Is this about Logan?”

“No, Miranda, it’s about me! And I wasn’t asking you for permission to go, I was just informing you, because I’m sure you’re going to want to throw me a going away party, and invite the whole town, and have Elena and Jeremy make me cards to try to have me realize all the things I’m going to be missing out on. But, I’m doing this.”

“Do you even have a job there? A place to live? What are you going to do for money?”

“I’ll figure it out. But I’m leaving, Miranda. Okay?”

And Miranda says, “We’ll talk about it more tomorrow,” because she can’t say it’s okay that Jenna’s moving up the coast to do God knows what.

“Jenna’s moving to New York?” Grayson asks when she hangs up, and Miranda punches her pillows a few times before she lays back down.

“Yeah, she thinks she is.”

“You’ve got to let her be her own person.”

“ _You’ve_ got to go to sleep if you want to make it through the night.”

He pushes the hair off her forehead and leans over to kiss her, and Miranda knows that Jenna isn’t doing this to hurt her, but she feels hurt just the same.

***

  
Miranda doesn’t know how she didn’t think about this situation when Jenna first left for Manhattan and would call her once a week, making it sound like she loved living with five other girls and working all the time and meeting guys who would forget about her before the sheets had even cooled.

The fact that if anything bad happened, really bad, Miranda would have to tell her about it through a phone line. She couldn’t hug her, or see her face, and it’s kind of like dad and the principal’s office all over again in her mind, as she says, "Jenna, you need to come home. There's been an accident," not even trying to stop the tears.

She sits in the hospital and thinks about Jenna alone on the train and whether she’s more angry than sad and how Miranda is going to make it alright when she finally gets here.

***

  
When Jenna comes home, she always brings big gifts for the kids, and is filled with stories to tell her and Grayson over glasses of wine after they send Jeremy and Elena to bed, but Miranda recognizes it for what it is.

She’s sure that Jenna does have friends, and guys she actually likes and moments at her jobs that are funny, but it seems like a show. Like it’s too much to be true or like Jenna really needs to convince them that this is what she wants.

The Jenna who visits for birthdays and holidays is not the same Jenna who calls her sometimes at night. Who needs Miranda to tell her to come home so she can then do the opposite and pay another month’s rent, and take on another temping job, and keep looking for whatever it is that she’s looking for.

Miranda doesn’t get it, but Miranda realizes she married the man of her dreams, and never wanted to leave home, and grew up while Jenna was still just learning to read.

So she listens, and laughs when she’s supposed to and tells her things are going to work out, that he’ll call, whoever he is, and that she’ll be okay, but Miranda is tired of waiting. She doesn’t know how Jenna survives it.

When she finds the textbooks in the basement, while trying to make room for the bedroom set Elena begged them to let her replace, she just wraps one up and takes it to the post office with Jenna’s address on it.

 _Happy Birthday!_ she writes on a post-it on the cover, and she hopes Jenna doesn’t get mad, doesn’t think it’s implying something, even though it clearly is, but mostly that Jenna gets happy. Gets to have real stories to tell them about.

***

  
When Jenna sends a copy of the acceptance letter to Miranda, she honestly shrieks in the kitchen, because Jenna’s coming home and she’s going to finish another degree, and Miranda already starts looking for the dress she’s going to wear to the graduation because she’s not going to let her sister give up on anything again.

***

  
Miranda tells herself she doesn’t make waves because that’s not something good girls do. But Miranda knows she doesn’t make waves because she’s afraid to. Jenna makes waves without even thinking. And Jenna somehow survives and the only person who ever looked at her like she was a disappointment instead of just a girl, was their mother.

Miranda tells Grayson that they’re going to put Jenna’s name in the will, and she means to ask her, first, that seems like the polite and appropriate thing to do, but she just doesn’t. Because asking would mean admitting that something could happen to her and to Grayson and that these beautiful children she has will be orphans, and that she’ll be burdening her sister with all this grief and responsibility, and it just seems easier to not acknowledge any of it. To just assume nothing will ever come of it, and Jenna will never know, and that Miranda won’t have to spend her last moments of thought on this earth wondering if her sister’s pissed that for the first time in her life, Miranda’s screwed with the status quo.


End file.
